The NYTimes is reporting that the EPA is launching a new public campaign  aimed at getting consumers to recycle those phones.  The $175,000 campaign “Recycle Your Cellphone.  It’s an Easy Call” is particularly aimed at the 18-34-year-olds in an attempt to recycle as many of the 150 million cellphones that are taken out of service each year in the US alone.

Eleven companies — AT&T, Best Buy, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Office Depot, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, Staples and T-Mobile — are partners in the campaign. Each has promised to collect phones and hold recycling events through their own programs.

Craig Rubens of GigaOm’s earth2tech has a very nice post titled “Big Green Business of Cellphone Recycling“ with lots of useful information.

Some further links:

Information on CTIA’s website about cellphone recycling is here.

Or, maybe this will motivate you further: National Geographic says that recycling your old cellphone could save African gorillas.

Here is a link to an older article in the NYTimes with names of several companies that recycle cellphones.  Do check to see if the links still work. 

Lots of companies and non-profits are working in this area.  Some examples are: the link to Earthworks is here and the link to Wirefly is here.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released the latest numbers on mobile phone usage in India.  Although the overall numbers show an increase because of record growth, the average usage per customer has fallen on both fronts: voice calls and SMS.  The SMS usage per subscriber has fallen 11% for GSM and 15% for CDMA operators.  In essence, Indians are talking less and texting less too. 

This needs a little perspective.  An average GSM user in India now sends about 32 SMSs per month instead of 35 sent earlier.  The world average of the 2 billion active users of SMS texting is about 2 SMS per day.  The Minute of Usage in India may have come down, but it is still the second highest in the world, next only to USA.

Inspite of eye-popping growth (217 million subscribers by Oct 2007), barely 23% of the population owns a phone.  So, there is a vast amount of potential there.  In 2007, mobile Value Added Services (VAS) generated $926 Million, which is still barely 7% of the total telecom revenues for Indian operators.  Most of these services are provided through SMS, IVR and WAP.  SMS of all types (P2P, A2P and P2A) contributed to over 55% of the VAS revenues in 2007. 

Some quick notes here: 

Revenue-Sharing: There is a rather big skew in revenue sharing.  Unlike the model elsewhere, the telcos keep the lion’s share (about 70%) of the revenues.  This provides no incentive to the VAS players to improve, innovate and provide better services. The falling ARPUs are only following a global trend.  Operators are too much focused on acquiring new subscribers rather than introduce new VAS avenues that could launch new revenue streams.  The market is in infancy and so tapping advertising as a mechanism is still unexplored.  I am confident that this will be a big driver of revenues.

Tariffs: One word describes the situation: Confusion.  On all fronts: different charges for pre-paid and post-paid SMS, no clarity on how premium SMS is charged, local/international roaming rates, etc.  On one hand, the operators have cut down the available free texting allowed on festive occasions (when there is a big uptick).  On the other, they have reduced the cost of voice calls to make it an easier alternative to texting for many people.  While this may work for a small section, bulk of the users will continue to prefer texting since it is asynchronous communication (the Homo Connectus as Tomi Ahonen called them).  In May ‘07, TRAI recommended the move from 4 digit to 5 digit short code which also led to a decline in SMS usage and hence revenues. 

Market Segments: First-time mobile subscribers are less apt to use SMS.  Less half the subscribers in India are English-literate and that effectively cuts down the SMS usage.  Yet, less than half a dozen startups are barely beginning to address the multi-lingual SMS texting.  Today, approximately 60% of mobile content downloaded in South India is in local languages.  Texting is only a small part of the spectrum.  Awareness, education, ease of use, user interface, cheaper yet better devices can pull in more subscriber usage of other VAS.  The fastest growing segment is the rural sector which provides new challenges to addressing their needs and providing new VAS that could stimulate revenues.  Rural subscribers can and will pay for premium services and value-additions.

What is needed from TRAI are more details of what VAS segments generate greater interest from subscribers.  Which ones will benefit both subscribers, VAS providers and telcos?  Since prepaid subscribers constitute about 90% of the market, how are operators battling subscriber committments?  It needs to push for clarity in how the services are charged.  It needs to push for better revenue-sharing models that provide incentives for new VAS and content providers to innovate and deliver on new business models.

Further Reading:

BDA provides a lot of market information.

The FCC’s 700 MHz auction, set for 24 January 2008, has the blogosphere buzzing with the bidders, their intentions, plans, fantasies and the like.  This large swath of band, which could raise as much as $30 Billion has attracted the likes of Google and Chevron to enter the bid.  Ram Shriram (of Sherpalo Ventures) has said that the 700 MHz spectrum is beachfront property and the most exciting spectrum auction we’ll likely see for the next decade.

Of the 266 applications received so far, only 96 applications were accepted for filing.  Click here for releases from the FCC website.  TechCrunch has a partial list of interesting companies participating. (Note: Although Chevron’s name is on the list, its application status on the FCC site is listed as ‘incomplete’).  Of course, Verizon, AT&T, Qualcomm and Clearwire are all in.  Sprint, Microsoft and T-Mobile are sitting this one out.

Well known mobile industry guru Chetan Sharma is conducting a survey, covering the hottest questions for the coming year 2008.  Please click here for the details and the link to the survey.

I will be providing a snapshot of the various predictions across the tech-in-general and mobile-in-particular spectrum.

Motorola announced today that Wateen Telecom of Pakistan has taken its first 802.16e WiMAX deployment live.  Wateen Telecom which is a part of Warid Telecom International, is offering WiMAX voice, data, Internet and multimedia services to both residential and corporate subscribers.  It is a nationwide network covering 22 cities and is the first major live network on this scale.  This particular deployment is using the 3.5GHz range that was allocated by the PTA the communications regulatory body there.

Warid Telecom provides GSM services to almost 8 million customers which is about 17% of the market.  Other players such as Mobilink and Burraq Telecom are also working on their plans for a WiMAX offering.  Motorola is working with these players too for supplying the required equipment.  It is expected that in Pakistan, as in other Asian markets like India, WiMAX will be used primarily to provide internet services.   Competition is rife.  A typical 512K DSL connection is offered for Rs. 2,000 (US $33.33) a month with free installation. The current price point of the WiMAX CPEs are higher than other options (fiber, DSL or cable) and that puts a damp on residential customers. 

Phil Marshall, vice president, Enabling Technologies, Yankee Group says

“2008 promises to be another exciting year for WiMAX and the entire 4G landscape. We expect that in 2008 several large scale national WiMAX deployments will be announced in Asia and Europe. Currently our conservative forecasts are calling for 37 million WiMAX globally subscribers by 2011.”

So, there you go - another number thrown out as a prediction.  Will it or won’t it fly?  I have covered about the numbers bandied around in another post.  My suggestion: Keep those finger crossed, will ya?

With WiMAX entering a market that is saturated with networks, applications, user devices, etc. there is considerable scepticism about its growth prospects and the role it will play.  Each forecast about the expansion of WiMAX needs to be tempered with the ground realities of the complex factors at play.  For instance, the departure of Sprint’s CEO and the reversal of the Sprint/Clearwire JV are bound to slow down Sprint’s rollout in US.  While the 3.5GHz usage is beset with coverage problems, the 2.5GHz usage is troubled by ’radio spectrum politics’.

Juniper Research has just released a report that forecasts that Mobile WiMAX 802.16e will begin to take off over the 2010-2013 period, exceeding 80 million mobile subscribers globally by 2013.

Report author Howard Wilcox said: 

“We are seeing more and more Mobile WiMAX 802.16e trials and network contracts – over 50 have been announced so far in 2007 alone: the market is very active in all regions of the world. We anticipate that mobile usage will develop after initial demand for fixed and portable services – WiMAX 802.16e is a flexible platform that can operate in all three modes of usage. Mobile WiMAX will represent a single digit proportion of the global mobile broadband base by 2013. This will be a tremendous achievement for this new technology platform which has recently been boosted by the ITU’s endorsement of it as an IMT2000 specification.”

Some key points include:
• The value of Mobile WiMAX service revenues globally will grow to over $23bn per annum by 2013.
• The top Mobile WiMAX markets will be the USA, Japan and S. Korea.
• Over 10 countries will have Mobile WiMAX device markets in excess of $100m per annum.
• There are several wildcard factors could significantly increase the size of the market including the emergence of very low cost laptops, and adding broadband capability to a range of devices including portable music/MP3 players, and games consoles.

A recent Yankee Group presentation spoke about total WiMAX subscribers worldwide touching about 24 M in 2010 and 37 M in 2011.  Of this, North America would contribute small growths: 4 M in 2009, 6 M in 2010 and 7.5 M in 2011 (all approximate estimates).

An earlier release by Senza Fili predicted 54 million WiMAX subscribers by 2012 with growth being driven by emerging markets.  This includes 61% of them using WiMAX for mobile access.

Sprint had announced earlier that it would start the rollout of its XOHM WiMAX networks before the end of this year.  With the divorce with Clearwire and the exit of Gary Forsee, everything seemed to be up in the air.  Sprint has now announced that it will begin the rollout in downtown areas of Chicago, Baltimore and Washington this week and later expanding outward.  Of course, it is for Sprint employees only but it still is a highly encouraging sign.  Sprint is planning an initial launch market for the advanced mobile Internet service set for commercial launch in a number of U.S. cities beginning the second quarter of 2008, and reaching 100 million people by year end.  However, with the dismal overall forecasts for the number of WiMAX subscribers and its own fortunes in a disarray, it is interesting to see how this shapes up.

TelephonyOnline says:

The company reportedly has 10,000 base stations ready to go, many of them on Sprint’s existing CDMA cell towers. Sprint will expand the coverage to areas that see high demand. Sprint has ordered 1750 base stations from its three vendors (Motorola, Samsung and Nokia), as well as 20,000 antennas. The company did not provide details on what devices its employees will be using, nor what devices consumers can expect to use once the full trials get underway.

Since this is the mobile version, the coverage and performance will be closely inspected and critically compared to that of CDMA2000 EV-DO network.  Sprint is planning to offer the service on an open basis, allowing any device or service provider to access the network.  If it uses its ample spectrum to provide high-speed capacities and an aggressive pricing, it could provide a good competition to cable and DSL.  But then this could cannibalize its own Pivot.  These are trying times indeed for Sprint.

I recently attended a program hosted by Prof. Tom Kosnik of Stanford University, Graduate Student Mohit Gundecha and BDA about the future of Indian Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS) Market.  It was a very interesting evening filled with a discussion by a panel of distinguished experts in this area.  Chetan Sharma, a well-known guru and one of the panelists has written an excellent summary of the event.  His post also provides links to the free report released on the occasion and videos of the event.  I also got a chance to have a quick word with him and get his insightful views on some points.

It is matter of great significance that with India poised to overtake US as the second largest number of mobile subscribers (see TRAI pdf press release here) as early as some time next year, how will this market shape up and what opportunities lie for the entrepreneur and startups? 

Thanks to Prof.Kosnik, Mohit Gundecha, BDA and Qualcomm (event sponsor) for organizing this event.

Watch this space, because a number of interesting and related topics are worth discussing (Falling ARPU numbers, which Value Added Services will fly, falling SMS usage, role of WiMAX, what role will the rural markets play, VC investment in India and some of the hottest startups rising there).